Gender= What your brain identifies with. Not necessarily what you have going on in-between your legs which is your sex. Of course when I made this thread I was an immature 15 year old who didn't know the difference, but now I am a 16 year old who watched this video.

" He makes no vain sacrifice who fights for a cause. All here are ready to die so that our brothers may live as free men. Liberty... sweet liberty... come fight with those who defend you." ----Enjolras.

I'm a girl. I'm always wondering why there are more female than male mizzies. From my observation this is the case at least on this forum, but I'm not sure about the outside world. I have no idea about the gender ratio in other fandoms either, but I believe that some fandoms "naturally" appeal more to male while others to female and that there must be a reason for this phenomenon. For example, is there anything in Les Mis that particularly attracts female readers? If so, what could it be?

Enjolras xD.Nah in all seriousness this is actually something I've noticed in all fandoms I've been a part of. As I am female that might actually be because those fandoms are more appealing to woman so I'd be more likely to join them? I don't know, actually I have no clue. :/

It seems to be that women outnumber men in most of the theatre fandoms, not just LM. Not sure exactly why, but maybe it's to do with the old stereotype that only gay men are into musicals (obviously not true, but yeah), and so perhaps guys think that if they say they're into musicals, everyone will assume they're gay. And male fans on the Internet seem like they tend to go mainly for sci-fi/fantasy/comic book fandoms (and sports, of course), leaving the theatre forums and blogs mainly to the female fans. But I'm more than happy to buck the trend. And I'm a fan of sci-fi, fantasy, comic books, and theatre -- you don't just have to be one or the other!

Prisoner 24653 wrote:It seems to be that women outnumber men in most of the theatre fandoms, not just LM. Not sure exactly why, but maybe it's to do with the old stereotype that only gay men are into musicals (obviously not true, but yeah), and so perhaps guys think that if they say they're into musicals, everyone will assume they're gay.

Oh really? That's an eye-opener for me. I've never heard of this stereotype before!

I'm just wondering if there's anything that can be generalized. I personally think fandoms that attract significantly more audience of one gender than the other must share some common features. For example, perhaps fandoms predominantly attracting females have more romantic elements while those attracting males focus more on action/fighting etc? And in terms of presentation, what's so special about performing arts/literature that women find interesting while men don't? But I don't know whether such hypotheses have any scientific grounds or they're just gender stereotype...

Prisoner 24653 wrote:It seems to be that women outnumber men in most of the theatre fandoms, not just LM. Not sure exactly why, but maybe it's to do with the old stereotype that only gay men are into musicals (obviously not true, but yeah), and so perhaps guys think that if they say they're into musicals, everyone will assume they're gay.

Oh really? That's an eye-opener for me. I've never heard of this stereotype before!

It's a pretty common stereotype, though it doesn't really have a *ton* of basis in practice. The male theater majors and actors I know tend to just not give a crap about people's opinion, no matter their orientation.

_23623_ wrote:if there's anything that can be generalized. I personally think fandoms that attract significantly more audience of one gender than the other must share some common features. For example, perhaps fandoms predominantly attracting females have more romantic elements while those attracting males focus more on action/fighting etc? And in terms of presentation, what's so special about performing arts/literature that women find interesting while men don't? But I don't know whether such hypotheses have any scientific grounds or they're just gender stereotype...

Every time I tried to a google search something related to this (I was specifically looking for theater since that's our main question), I just got articles about how female writers (and roles) are less common than males. This one was interesting. But that doesn't really answer the question, does it?

If anything, 'girls like this and boys like that' is more of a question of conditioning vs biology, which is the basis of probably hundreds of introductory sociology courses. I haven't taken these courses myself (they sound so interesting! but I don't have tiiiiime!!!), but from really nerdy conversations I've had with people who had taken the classes, an answer along the lines of "We just internalize some of the stereotypes we were introduced to at a young age and just don't think much about them now" is fairly standard. Exactly how we do this is a little murky, and might not have as many "positive" differences as "negative" ones; a woman isn't going to like musicals just because she's a woman, but a man might be more hesitant to get into musicals because someone told him that men didn't do that when he was young. That's obviously not a perfect explanation, but it's a starting point. (And not everything that is introduced in a negative way scars us for life; I wasn't around the least homophobic people on earth as a little kid but weeeeelp. People are complicated.)

I've been doing a musical theatre unit with one of my classes lately and made them all do research into a musical of their choice. It's been interesting to see some of the boys go from initial complaints to really getting into it once they go beyond stereotypical ideas of what musicals are and see the breadth that is out there. Some were already there though, which is good

By musical theatre standards, I think Les Mis is more balanced than fandoms for a lot of other shows. I know a lot of guys who like it a lot certainly.

Gervais wrote:Every time I tried to a google search something related to this (I was specifically looking for theater since that's our main question), I just got articles about how female writers (and roles) are less common than males. This one was interesting. But that doesn't really answer the question, does it?

If anything, 'girls like this and boys like that' is more of a question of conditioning vs biology, which is the basis of probably hundreds of introductory sociology courses. I haven't taken these courses myself (they sound so interesting! but I don't have tiiiiime!!!), but from really nerdy conversations I've had with people who had taken the classes, an answer along the lines of "We just internalize some of the stereotypes we were introduced to at a young age and just don't think much about them now" is fairly standard. Exactly how we do this is a little murky, and might not have as many "positive" differences as "negative" ones; a woman isn't going to like musicals just because she's a woman, but a man might be more hesitant to get into musicals because someone told him that men didn't do that when he was young. That's obviously not a perfect explanation, but it's a starting point. (And not everything that is introduced in a negative way scars us for life; I wasn't around the least homophobic people on earth as a little kid but weeeeelp. People are complicated.)

I did the same thing the other day. I hoped to find some academic sources about this, or at least some research about the general relationship between gender and aesthetics, but there wasn't any. Investigation into this field could be an interesting academic topic and a good marketing strategy!

I agree that internalization of stereotypes is an acceptable explanation. I think another possibility may be that boys think singing and dancing are "girls' stuff" and they will appear "girly" if they show any interest in them. Therefore boys may stay away from singing and dancing just like how they avoid dolls and the color pink. That's my personal interpretation of what was going on in Acaila's class but I may be wrong. I think children develop such stereotypes probably because many parents have educated them, explicitly or implicitly, about their gender image. For example, parents may tell their daughter "you should(not) do this because you're a girl", or give dolls to their baby girl because they think "girls should like dolls". At least this has happened to me when I was young, but I happen to be a girl who think dolls are the most boring toys ever invented.

As much as "nurture" matters, I don't think the influence of "nature" is neglectable. That sounds like a pretty clichéd argument but I find it plausible. It is possible that a woman loves musical partly because she's a woman. But to what extent gender determines preferences is indeed uncertain and difficult to verify. In a statistical sense, what controlled experiments can verify is just a correlation but that doesn't imply causal relation anyway.

Prisoner 24653 wrote:And male fans on the Internet seem like they tend to go mainly for sci-fi/fantasy/comic book fandoms (and sports, of course), leaving the theatre forums and blogs mainly to the female fans.

Given this...I find it quite interesting that among my friends (in real life, as I don't know a lot of Internet communities), all of the sci-fi fans are girls! There's also an opposite extreme: all of my friends who love rock music are boys. Comic fandoms are quite balanced though.

Prisoner 24653 wrote:And male fans on the Internet seem like they tend to go mainly for sci-fi/fantasy/comic book fandoms (and sports, of course), leaving the theatre forums and blogs mainly to the female fans.

Given this...I find it quite interesting that among my friends (in real life, as I don't know a lot of Internet communities), all of the sci-fi fans are girls! There's also an opposite extreme: all of my friends who love rock music are boys. Comic fandoms are quite balanced though.

Well among my friends I know some who like rock, and others who even like things like hard rock, metal and screamo and they are all girls.My male friends? Mainly pop and musicals! haha.I'm female and I personally like musicals, pop, rock, 70s/80s music.I'm a sci fi fan as well.